so.--Farewell."

While Time was thus advancing towards the fatal day, it was graving deep
ravages within the pure breast of Madeline Lester. She had borne up, as
we have seen, for some time, against the sudden blow that had shivered
her young hopes, and separated her by so awful a chasm from the side of
Aram; but as week after week, month after month rolled on, and he still
lay in prison, and the horrible suspense of ignominy and death still hung
over her, then gradually her courage began to fail, and her heart to
sink. Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject, suspense is
the one that most gnaws, and cankers into, the frame. One little month of
that suspense, when it involves death, we are told, in a very remarkable
work lately published by an eye-witness. [Note: See Mr. Wakefield's work
on 'The Punishment of Death.'] is sufficient to plough fixed lines and
furrows in the face of a convict of five-and-twenty--sufficient to dash
the brown hair with grey, and to bleach the grey to white. And this
suspense--suspense of this nature, for more than eight whole months, had
Madeline to endure!

About the end of the second month the effect upon her health grew
visible. Her colour, naturally delicate as the hues of the pink shell or
the youngest rose, faded into one marble whiteness, which again, as time
proceeded, flushed into that red and preternatural hectic, which once
settled, rarely yields its place but to the colours of the grave. Her
flesh shrank from its rounded and noble proportions. Deep hollows traced
themselves beneath eyes which yet grew even more lovely as they grew less
serenely bright. The blessed Sleep sunk not upon her brain with its
wonted and healing dews. Perturbed dreams, that towards dawn succeeded
the long and weary vigil of the night, shook her frame even more than the
anguish of the day. in these dreams one frightful vision--a crowd--a